


3 AM

by hakura0



Category: Batman (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 04:52:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7921276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakura0/pseuds/hakura0
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy has a relationship with three AM. Three AM is the old days - arrows and partnership and a city that was mostly his; a fresh start and fresh pages pulled from the rest of his life so far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3 AM

Roy has a relationship with three AM. Three AM is the old days - arrows and partnership and a city that was mostly his; a fresh start and fresh pages pulled from the rest of his life so far. 

(3 am is when he realizes that the world is falling down around him and the most important person in his life is walking slowly away.)

It's the stars, before that. His father waking him up in the small hours of the morning to watch what isn't quite the stars burn and fall around him. The size of the universe beyond his grasp, his scope. (He wonders if it was all innocent - later - if it was all debris and scheduled events, or if he ever saw the aftermath of a battle.)

Eventually three AM is a warm familiar haze, low and easy. It's why, why, why a dark shadow curled around his shoulders - a stinging in his face that he knows is only in his head because the punch flew weeks, months ago.

Three AM is caffeine and spare parts, a headache cut with distraction. It's where-is-my-life-going, half-sleeping in a room of people who don't trust each other nearly as far as they could throw them.

(Sometimes dark alleys again. Sometimes energy drinks and papers, restlessness and the soft glow of a computer screen. Sometimes he's even asleep.)

Three AM is an insistent nudge against his shoulder and the Red Hood sitting half-dressed on the side of the bed holding up a book and asking him, "Have you read this shit?" before his eyes are awake enough to focus and read the title.

"No...?" He guesses, rubbing sleep from his eyes and squinting. All he can make out is a dress, period something maybe, and the barest glimpse of the title before Jason pulls it away. "Wait, maybe the movie. Is that the one where he keeps his wife locked in the attic and she burns the place down?"

It is. (Jason is still offended, almost, but he seems offended to begin with.) Jason talks, animatedly, rails on the mail protagonist whose name Roy's half-awake brain can't be bothered to remember even mid-conversation. Roy thinks it might be the most he's ever heard Jason talk, and he's almost finished by the time he notices the dark circles under his eyes.

"Tea?" He asks, eventually, fairly sure there's something passing for ingredients in the kitchen, after his agreement in the level of fucked up the story and what's-his-name are. 

Jason shoves the book in his hand, and they pay two dollars to watch one of the movie adaptations with tea and something that still passes for apples. Roy thumbs through the book, attention on and off the movie. Somewhere, it puts Jason to sleep. He closes his own eyes but that goes nowhere so he watches instead, sets a jacket that's within reach over Jason's legs.

Two nights later it's something Shakespeare, Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights, a list that goes on and on. "How about some Harry Potter next time?" He half jokes, partway through a spiel on what he thinks might be the Silmarillion. The look he gives him could kill.

(He still wakes up almost a month and over a dozen books later to Jason smacking his arm with a too-thick book. "This is fucking awful." 

Roy curls smaller, ducking away from the next swing but grins. "Wait'll you see the movies."

(Three AM is The Classics (and not so classics) with Jason Todd. Listening and distracting and not rolling over and going back to sleep when it's clear that this is Jason after a nightmare. That this is Jason reaching out. That this is someone actively needing him.)

The mornings get less frequent, and Roy tries not to be a little disappointed at the same time that he's relieved. It helps when he wakes up and sees Jason still asleep, feels his back against his own.

He wakes up now, if Jason does. Stays too-still and tries to seem asleep even as he can hear Jason's unsettled breaths, as he is just barely aware of the hand fisted in his hair, the head resting against his exposed back.

If he reaches over, if he makes his consciousness known, Jason will close like a book 'go for a smoke' and he'll see him again in an hour. He followed him once, to the roof of the building, in nothing but a pair of lounge pants, at the end of a trail of bare footprints in the thin veneer of snow. 

When he comes back down they'll spar, or cook, or something. He'll act like none of it ever happened anyway.

If he feigns sleep, even if he moves closer, makes additional stealthy contact while Jason waits for the world to turn right-side up again, he'll stay as long as he has to and then find some book or some factoid - Roy, you won't believe this shit they're making a fucking He-Man movie, they remade some game, I think I finally found the worst book on the damn planet - any excuse to rouse him.

Sometimes Roy manages to wake him up first, stir him from practically visible nightmare and suggest they order in some Chinese for breakfast and watch C-Grade horror movies for cameos. 

3 AM is when sometimes-kind of-maybe Jason Todd will accept support, as long as he doesn't think you know you're giving it. Or maybe he just pretends too.

(Roy wakes up at three AM with his heart racing, the edges of a nightmare still fresh in his mind and a hand stroking his hair. Somehow, he sleeps again. Somehow, when he wakes up, he sees that Jason has too.)


End file.
